Identification and authentication of articles is required for numerous purposes, such as anti-counterfeiting protection, identification of stolen goods, proof of original, determining impropriety, ensuring legitimacy and originality of goods being serviced and the like. Identification and authentication of goods and articles is also critical also for health and safety.
Such goods and articles for which identification and authentication are required include those such as jewellery, artworks, antiques, artifacts, fashion items, handbags, timepieces, wines and spirits, automobile parts, electrical goods, pharmaceuticals, foodstuffs, credit cards, loyalty cards, identification cards, animals, human beings and the like.
Traditional manners in manners of marking of goods include engraving, serial numbers, batch numbers, manufacturers' labels, tamper proof labels, seals, watermarks, proof tags and the like.
In some cases, a marking may be a unique identifiable mark, or in other cases, the marking may be a batch or brand mark.
Within the art there exist numerous manners in which to mark goods for identification and authentication purposes, such as for example attachment of an adhesive label containing a hologram to an article or an object, which is typically considered complex and difficult to reproduce. Credit cards may also include reflective holographic images, however such images are often rudimentary and may be reproduced by counterfeiters.
Other techniques include attachment of a radio-frequency label (RFID) to the object to be authenticated, which requires the reading thereof by a reader, which then may be validated by way of a validation system.
Unique chemical scents or signatures have also been utilised in the art, so as to provide a unique marking to articles or objections, which requires analysis to validate whether the scent is of the type to which it is purported.
Within the art there exists processes such as that of PCT/FR2001/00322 which describes a reading process for a three-dimensional means of identification containing a mixture of at least two materials that can be distinguished from one another in the form of a transparent matrix containing bubble. The process comprises a step to recognize the heterogeneous internal structure in two dimensions of the means of identification and another step to verify and prove its third dimension characterized by reading and verifying the three-dimensional layout of the bubbles contained in the means of identification. The bubbles include members that had been self-generated during the hardening of the transparent material, by submitting the means of identification successively and immediately, while the means of identification is maintained in a fixed position, to different lightings to determine by a diffuse lighting a random two dimensional pattern of the bubbles thereby allowing them to be read and coded, and to confirm by a direct lighting from the same lighting sources the three dimensional aspect of the identification means. Another such process is that of U.S. Pat. No. 7,438,237 which describes an identification and authentication process that is indirect and does not employ a specific reader, for identifying an object the process. three-dimensional identifier is attached to an object, the identifier presenting three-dimensional heterogeneities distributed in a random manner within a transparent material purporting the identifier difficult or impossible to reproduce. The process uses stereoscopic vision of the human eye to verify a three-dimensional appearance and confirm the authenticity of the three-dimensional identifier, and the identification process or reading is made by visual comparison of a two-dimensional first image of the three-dimensional identifier stored in a database accessible by a network, to the three-dimensional identifier.